Sampling Ben Franklin:Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts, the host city of the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Whatever Ben Franklin might think about seeing names like Ben Affleck and Al Franken at the Beantown convention this week, he'd probably take notice of Sean Combs.
P. Diddy's "Citizen Change" campaign is using the slogan "Vote or Die!" to motivate the youth of the United States to vote in the upcoming presidential elections.
"We have the power to make things cool, hot and sexy- from the clothes we wear to the cars we drive to the bling we buy, " Diddy declared during his voter registration at NYU's Kimmel Center. "Now we're going to make voting cool. We are the true leaders of today."
Ben Franklin and P. Diddy would probably have a lot to talk about, if they could meetup at a political convention.
In the last decade of his life, Benjamin Franklin served as a member of the Constitutional Convention and was elected president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. Historians have called him the quintessential American because of his creative pragmatism, scientific innovation, and democratic spirit.
And, back in the day, Ben Franklin came up with a similar slogan to encourage union of the colonies.
Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette provided information about politics to the people. Ben Franklin used political cartoons to illustrate news stories and to heighten reader appeal. The May 9, 1754 issue included Join, or Die, which is widely considered the first American political cartoon.
Of course, the idea of suing P. Diddy for copyright infringement for sampling his slogan might not occur to Ben Franklin; copyright laws weren't enacted in America until 1790. Benjamin Franklin died on April 17, 1790.
Posted by
abnu on Saturday, July 31, 2004 @ 12:56 AM
[ + ]
Maui wauie: Some people on the island of Kaua'i have their skirts in a knot. They're outraged at the name of a new cigarette from the consumer-friendly folks who brought us Joe Camel.
The cigarette pack label promises "Hawaiian hints of pineapple and coconut." The ad indicates the "Kauai Kolada" variety, along with a "Twista Lime" cigarette, will be available for a limited time.
The vice chairwoman of Tobacco-Free Kauai says, "We're outraged that they abused our island name for a product that brings death, disease and addiction, especially when Kaua'i often is marketed as a healing place."
Posted by
abnu on Thursday, July 29, 2004 @ 6:28 AM
[ + ]
It was a dark and stormy night; the results of the fiction contest were washed upon the beach in front of the beachfront cottage where I was in a bottle.
In the Children's Literature category, an award of dubious distinction went to Cory Gano of Camas, WA for this opening sentence:
As he entered the room within which so many a wild night of their sweltering love affair had been spent, the White Rabbit regarded her with benevolent eyes, her posture such that he suspected something was wrong, but before he could speak Alice unburied her face from her trembling hands and between her intense sobs he made out the words, "I'm late . . . I'm late."
Posted by
abnu on Wednesday, July 28, 2004 @ 10:13 PM
[ + ]
Parodies Buy The Dashboard Lights: A long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me buy.
Back in the day, companies would pay big bucks for the use of much-loved songs to promote products. It was an advertising expense. Microsoft reportedly paid the Rolling Stones $10 Million for the use of "Start Me Up" to launch Windows™, and the same song was later used by Ford Motor Company.
Forget the dollars lost from consumers who freely share music files over the Internet. The latest ripoff that's burning music publishers is the so-called "fair use" of music and lyrics for commercial purposes, under the guise of parody.
Just this week, the creative animators at JibJab came under fire for using Woody Guthrie's song "This Land is Your Land" in a political parody of President George W. Bush and presidential hopeful John Kerry. It's funny, but the music publishers aren't laughing.
"This puts a completely different spin on the song," said Kathryn Ostien, director of copyright licensing for the publisher. "The damage to the song is huge."
Is this political parody, a self-promotional advertisement, really a parody of the song, as claimed by JibJab in defense of the ensuing copyright infringement lawsuit? I think not.
And now, the inspired folks at Linspire have put together a very flashy advertisement called Run Linspire. Will the publishers of The Doors' "Light My Fire" agree that this is a "parody" of "Light My Fire" by Jim Morrison, as stated in the "credits" at the end of this advertisement? I really don't think so!
UPDATE: Within a few hours of this post, it appears that the Run Linspire animation was taken down from the Linspire website link above. I don't suppose that Michael Robertson, the CEO of Linspire, reads Wordlab regularly (even after he was called the Master of his Domain in a post here last Tuesday). Maybe not everyone thought "Come on baby, run Linspire..." was very funny. "It's a bit corny," Robertson wrote, "but this parody will likely make you smile and remember our new name." Maybe Linspire got a cease and desist letter from the music publisher. Or, perhaps their new friends at Microsoft, who are cutting Linspire a check for $20 Million, were not amused. There's another copy of the animation here if you missed it. Look quick; it might not be up very long.
UPDATE 7/31: Abnu is a Guest Blogger at Legal Underground, which hosts an expanded version of this post that gets deeper into this copyfight discussion with lawyers who blawg.
Posted by
abnu on Tuesday, July 27, 2004 @ 12:48 PM
[ + ]
Fabrica:WordCount™ is a new interactive presentation of the 86,800 most frequently used English words. It’s just one little example of the creative thinking out of Fabrica, the Benetton Research and Development Communication Centre, in Italy, a think tank that supports the creative development of young artists and researchers from all over the world.
In its role as a laboratory of applied creativity (its name comes from the Latin word meaning "workshop"), Fabrica deals with new forms of communication, following two key principles: a hands-on approach to training (the young grant holders are invited to "learn by practice"), and a multi-disciplinary approach.
Like the Medici of Renaissance Italy, the Benetton family has long been a patron of creative artists. The relationship between Benetton and creative artistic expression was formulated by Luciano Benetton and Oliviero Toscani, the creative genius who separated branding from advertising for the Benetton Group.
Luciano Benetton : "The purpose of advertising is not to sell more. It's to do with institutional publicity, whose aim is to communicate the company's values (...) We need to convey a single strong image, which can be shared anywhere in the world."
Oliviero Toscani pursues this : "I am not here to sell pullovers, but to promote an image"... Benetton's advertising draws public attention to universal themes like racial integration, the protection of the environment, Aids...
The history of Benetton's unconventional advertising under the unfettered direction of Oliviero Toscani is legendary, and the subject of many an interesting case study. Since the departure of Toscani from Benneton in May 2000, after the controversial death-row campaign, the house of Benetton has taken a less shocking approach to branding.
Fabrica is now the communications arm of the Benetton Group. And, a different approach to branding the company and advertising its fashion is now evident in their magazine, Colors, on The Hip Site, and with their brand extensions Playlife and Killer Loop, and their "most trend-setting brand," Sisley.
Along with this fresh approach to advertising, Benetton remains committed to social responsibility as a brand characteristic of the group, by working on social causes like racial discrimination, poverty, child labor, and AIDS awareness, but in less controversial campaigns than Toscani's. As pointed out on Snark Hunting, Benetton has found new ways to promote social causes without shocking imagery; like "Food for Life" in partnership with the World Food Program of the United Nations.
Posted by
abnu on Monday, July 26, 2004 @ 5:16 AM
[ + ]
Let's Roll: The 9/11 Commission Report was presented yesterday, and everyone can get a free copy. If you want to look for a specific word, or find out what the 9/11 Commission Report says about any topic, there's a searchable version here.
We searched the 9/11 Commission Report for "Let's Roll". Remember the famous quote that was attributed to Todd Beamer, one of the passengers associated with the disruption of the highjacking of Flight 93? According to CNN:
The battle aboard the plane was burned into history by the story of one passenger, Todd Beamer, who used an onboard phone to call the FBI. At the end of his call, the operator overhead him say to other passengers, "Let's roll."
President Bush used the "Let's Roll" catchphrase in his 2002 State of the Union Address, at which Todd Beamer's widow was an invited guest. And, Lisa Beamer wrote a book, Let's Roll, but it doesn't mention the legal battles of the Todd M. Beamer Foundation to trademark the slogan.
"Let's roll" is not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report, which notes interviews with people who took calls from passengers, including Todd Beamer. The report provides new details about the crash of Flight 93. During the passengers' attempts to thwart the terrorists and enter the cockpit of Flight 93, someone yelled, "Roll it!" It's not clear who yelled that, or what was meant, or if "Roll it!" was what the air-phone operator overheard during the call from Todd Beamer.
The foundation originally named for Todd M. Beamer doesn't use the slogan "Let's Roll" anymore--and it has a new name.
In 2004, the Foundation changed its name to Heroic Choices. Heroic Choices remains true to the spirit of Todd Beamer as we move beyond the events of Sept. 11, 2001 turning tragedy into triumph for children who have suffered from trauma to help them for the rest of their lives.
According to a recent press release, the foundation's new CEO, Alice Mae Britt, "will lead Heroic Choices as it makes the transition from a service for children traumatized by Sept. 11 to one that provides grief counseling, mentoring and resiliency-building for eligible youths in the New York region and eventually across the United States, she said. The organization has been renamed Heroic Choices to reflect its expanded mission."
Posted by
abnu on Friday, July 23, 2004 @ 12:33 AM
[ + ]
Drinkin' Donuts: Obesity is now recognized as a disease, and doctors are telling their patients to stop eating donuts. No doctor has yet told a patient not to drink donuts, so...
With sales and earnings suffering in part from the onslaught of low-carb diets, Krispy Kreme (KKD) is looking to beverages to lure customers. The chain will start pouring frozen blended beverages this month, along with its biggest rival, Dunkin' Donuts.
Krispy Kreme is committed to finding new ways to grow its customers, so it's come up with the idea to glaze frozen drinks called Original Kreme with their unique doughnut taste. "We feel our expanded beverage offerings will provide tremendous growth opportunity for both the company and the Krispy Kreme brand," Chief Executive Scott Livengood said in a statement.
It's not known, at this time, if there are plans to offer a beverage that blends tobacco for smokers who are nostalgic for the smokey donut shops of yesterday.
Posted by
abnu on Thursday, July 22, 2004 @ 12:17 AM
[ + ]
That's the ticket: Kerry Edwards is offering to sell the kerryedwards.com domain name, asking $150,000, according to media reports.
Perhaps he should create a political weblog at "Kerry Edwards" dot com, and see if such a big name blogger can get an invitation as a "cyberjournalist" to blog the party conventions. With all the free press, Kerry Edwards would probably get more hits than an Instapundit.
Hey, maybe Joe Trippi knows how to raise money with the Kerry Edwards domain name. Ya think?
Posted by
abnu on Wednesday, July 21, 2004 @ 12:10 AM
[ + ]
Master of his Domain: Lindows, the story that refuses to die, is back once again, this time with news that Michael Robertson has capitulated to the awesome power of Bill Gates, the world's richest man, and has agreed to turn over to Microsoft all the allegedly infringing Lindows domain names.
Reporting the settlement, the Financial Times summarised what was really at issue in this trademark dispute.
For its part, Lindows had claimed that "windows" was already established as a generic name for the way software was presented on a computer screen before Microsoft launched its own product under that name.
In a deal that lets Microsoft avoid the risk of its Windows trademark being overturned in court, the software giant has agreed to pay $20m to buy Lindows' internet domain names. Lindows said it would change its name to Linspire - a name it had already adopted in a number of countries outside the US to escape other legal challenges from Microsoft.
Under the settlement, Lindows has 60 days to stop using the Lindows name on its products.
Microsoft will pay Lindows $15 million in the next 30 days. The remaining $5 million will paid out once Lindows transfers control of most of Lindows-related Web site names over to Microsoft. That must be done by Jan. 25.
Lindows has four years to continue using two of its Web addresses — www.lindows.com and www.lindowsinc.com — but only to redirect visitors to its new Web sites. After the four years have passed, those sites will also be transferred to Microsoft.
In the end, the idea to name the company "Lindows" seems to have been rather inspired. Lindows chief executive, Michael Robertson, noted that the terms of the settlement "make business sense for all parties." Party on.
And, as if aware that the DOJ might be following this lawsuit, the Microsoft lawyer dutifully said, "We are pleased that Lindows will now compete in the market place with a name distinctly its own." It's not clear whether his "we" is meant to include Mr. Gates' personal pleasure with the prospect of competition from Linux operating systems, by any other name, or not. Nah.
Posted by
abnu on Tuesday, July 20, 2004 @ 12:09 AM
[ + ]
Let the flirting begin: Here is a nice email I received today from Adam Sculthorpe, a creator of Flirtopolis, which was named with help from the Wordlab community on the Wordboard:
Flirtopolis was named with the assistance of Wordlab so I wanted to give you a heads up that we have opened the site up for preview, Flirtopolis is the proof of concept site that will feed back into multiple commercialized versions that focus on their own specific niche markets.
Thanks for providing a great online naming community, once we have all the feedback from this PoC we will be aiming to produce a better interface and a strong brand for our first commercial version, we have learnt a lot from producing Flirtopolis.
Kudos to all of you who helped make Adam a happy camper -- you know who you are. Or, rather, Abnu probably knows who you are even if you don't.
Posted by
Jay on Monday, July 19, 2004 @ 4:44 PM
[ + ]
Enrondezvous: Enron Corporation was named "America's Most Innovative Company" by Fortune magazine for five consecutive years, from 1996 to 2000, and was on the magazine's list of the "100 Best Companies to Work for in America" in 2000. The next year, Enron was exposed as "the largest corporate failure in history, and became emblematic of institutionalized and well-planned corporate fraud."
The fraudulent accounting practices that led to this monumental failure were complicated, and the cleverly named energy scams like "Death Star" and "Fat Boy" are still not understood by most people. Even the company's former CEO, Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay claims to have been clueless about the fraudulent goings-on at Enron.
What soon became clear to everyone was that this company was definitiely going to need a new name. In the first quarter of 2002, NPR's listeners, many of them probably still reeling from the personal financial impact of the collapse of Enron, offered suggestions for a new name including End-Run, Enwrong, and Moron. The people hated Enron. So much, the Houston Astros paid Enron $5 Million to get the damned name off their baseball field.
Two years later, a federal judge has now cleared the way for the Enron corporation to emerge from bankruptcy protection. Its corporate identity will fade into history, but the Enron name will continue on the record in criminal prosecutions and civil litigation, and in the vernacular as a synonym for executive greed and corporate malfeasance. After the sale of most of the assets of Enron in the bankruptcy, the remaining Enron holdings will be managed and operated under the name Prisma Energy International.
It is not known if company executives consulted Houston Astrologers to divine this name, or if they checked a dictionary to see if a prism is really "a medium that distorts, slants, or colors whatever is viewed through it." It doesn't matter--as long as it's not called Enron.
Colorful Names: According to the editors of Graphic Design USA magazine, which publishes the Annual Color Forecast,
Color communicates and color sells. Products, services, ideas, causes and, in 2004, even politicians. And while color directions evolve gradually and move in mysterious ways, some moments in time invite consensus. This is one such moment, where the color experts see a move toward brighter, bolder and more clear colors arising from a yearning for optimism and fantasy after the dog days of recession and war.
But this annual forecast is interesting not only for the colors that are expected to be hot in the year ahead, but also for the names of colors that will be cool. Among the prophetable colors forecast for 2004 were "Tickle-A happy red-tickle makes the whole word giggle," and "Vanilla-Create your own sundae with this go-with-everything color."
Now, the Color Marketing Group has forecast that in 2005 the hot colors will be named Bucko, Atomic, Cylinder, Olivery, Sonic, Just Steel, Intrigue Blue, Living Green, Fire Copper, Sea Shell, Sea Coral, Latin Rose, Twilight Shadow, Eden, Virtual Tango, Soulful Grape, Black Saphire, Northern Lights, Washed Away, Briar, Miami Ice, Silver Leaf, Driftwood, Chiblonde, Rustic, Urban Sheen, World Spiced, Clay Pot, Good Earth, Thistle Bloom, Late Night Blue, and Sulphur. Color Me Happy!
Posted by
abnu on Friday, July 16, 2004 @ 6:46 AM
[ + ]
Got Juice? Alcoholic milk, available in four flavors: Strawberry Rush, Wicked Irish, Banana Smash and Choc Fusion with an alcohol content of 5.3 per cent, is proposed to be marketed in Australia as Moo Joose, with the tagline, "Milk it for all it's worth."
Meanwhile, an enterprising British company is offering a mix of alcohol and oxygen known as AWOL, for Alcohol Without Liquid, that promises to get people drunk 10 times faster, without the problems of hangovers, calories and carbs. AWOL is created in a machine that mixes a shot of alcoholic spirit with oxygen, this creates a cloudy vapour and is inhaled through the mouth or nose. Alcohol vapour is a "hit" in London, but the Aussies are skeptical of getting drunk without beer.
Lawmakers in Australia have vowed to ban alcohol mixed with oxygen or with milk, saying that combining intoxicants with natural products that are associated with good health sends the wrong message.
In an unrelated story, young children and pregnant women who drink milk from California cows may be exposed to unsafe levels of a toxic chemical used in rocket fuel, according to a new study by an environmental group.
Posted by
abnu on Thursday, July 15, 2004 @ 9:36 AM
[ + ]
Plot Twist: A jury recently awarded $15 Million to former professional hockey enforcer, Tony Twist, who sued Todd McFarlane, the writer-illustrator of Spiderman comics, for nicknaming one of his mobster characters "Tony Twist" in the Spawn comic books in the early 1990s.
Famous writers of fiction and their constitutional lawyers are taking note of this case, which is sure to be appealed. Blogger Brian J. Noggle muses:
McFarlane did not name the mobster Tony Twist. Tony Twist in the Spawn comic book was a nickname given to a mobster whose real fictional name was Antonio "Tony Twist" Twistelli (more detailed Sports Illustrated article). So a tough guy enforcer thug with a name of Antonio Twistelli was given the nickname Tony Twist, an allusion to the hockey player made his living espousing those qualities.
Many lawyers and writers thought that the use of a famous name in the storyline of a fictional literary work, in this way at least, would be constitutionally protected free speech. Anyway, isn't "Tony" just a nickname for Anthony R. "Tony" Twist, himself? The jury must have missed the plot.
Posted by
abnu on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 @ 11:24 PM
[ + ]
JibJab: There's a new blog in town. Funny thing is, is that it's a business blog designed by the clever folks at JibJab, an award-winning creative studio that's really making a name for itself.
The economics of JibJab are simple. Simply insane, that is. We do an advertising job, squirrel away the money, and then take time off to produce something like “This Land” which, in most cases, won’t make us a dime. Some have called it a fiscally reckless lifestyle (actually, I think I said that), but gosh darn it, we’ve got big dreams, and dreams die hard.
If these crazy guys can keep their web servers from crashing under the loads of traffic generated by this excellent piece of work, their wildest dreams just might come true.
Posted by
abnu on Monday, July 12, 2004 @ 10:37 PM
[ + ]
Have you herd? When birds and animals congregate, we humans give these groups some really interesting names. A gaggle of geese in the water is a skein of geese in flight, which becomes a wedge of geese in flight formation. There seems to be a different name for every congregation of bird species, from a colony of penguins to a company of parrots, and even a parliament of owls. There's the unkindness of ravens and a murder of crows.
Some of the names of animal gatherings actually make a lot of sense, like a lounge of lizards, a prickle of porcupines, a crash of rhinoceroses, a bloat of hippos, a pride of lions, a cackle of hyenas, and a tower of giraffes. Others seem rather arbitrary, like a gang of elk, a troop of monkeys, and a pace of asses.
These names for animal congregations might spark the creative imagination during any naming and branding exercise. By far, the largest congregation of all is a google of animal groups.
SNARKUPDATE 7/7: And, of course, Wordlab has a couple hundred such names of its own in the Collective Nouns category.
Posted by
abnu on Tuesday, July 06, 2004 @ 8:13 AM
[ + ]
Famous Last Words:John Adams (2nd President of the U.S.) and Thomas Jefferson (3rd President) both died on the same day--July 4, 1826. Fifty years to the day these great American patriots presented the Declaration of Independence, their histories were united in death as they had been in life. From his deathbed at the farm in Massachusetts, John Adams last words were, "Thomas Jefferson survives." Unbeknownst to him, Jefferson had died at Monticello just a few hours earlier.
"I'd like to think that John Adams' dying words are true now, though false at the time he uttered them: Thomas Jefferson survives," writes Mark Liberman at Language Log, in a very thoughtful post for Independence Day.
Posted by
abnu on Sunday, July 04, 2004 @ 9:00 AM
[ + ]
The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog. Everyone who types with all fingers is familiar with that sentence, but not many know why it became the standard typing test. It's a pangram; a sentence that includes every letter of the alphabet used in the English language. It is sometimes suggested that this sentence, when misquoted as "the lazy dog" rather than "a lazy dog" is still a pangram, but where's the "a" in that version? Want to have more fun with words?
Try typing this text message on a mobile phone: "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human." Kimberly Yeo, the Singaporean business student who broke the Guinness World Records' time for the fastest SMS typed on a mobile phone, did it in 43.24 seconds. If you can't believe what you're reading, you should watch the video clip of Miss Yeo's thumbs in action.
Posted by
abnu on Saturday, July 03, 2004 @ 1:02 AM
[ + ]
Note the cool Fine Print: The content found on WordLab
is free to the world. Although we cannot guarantee that any of this
content is not already in use by someone, somewhere, on this planet
who may have seen it on this Web site or created it independently of
our Web site, we have made a reasonable effort to give you what we believe
to be original names and slogans and generally good stuff. Use what
you will of our content since it is here for the taking. However, if
you decide to use one of our names for a commercial activity, and since
we have no assurance that the name may not already be in use by someone
else as a trademark, domain name or otherwise, we strongly suggest that
you take appropriate legal precautions, such as seeing a lawyer. In
short, any necessary due diligence is up to you, but we at least make
no claims on your potential future dream name. We merely ask that if
you do decide to use any of our content, that you please send us an
email ["word at wordlab dot com"] about it for use in our
internal records and eplosive marketing campaigns. Thank you, and enjoy.
